


between scylla and charybdis

by shrill_fangirl_screaming



Category: Descendants (Disney Movies)
Genre: F/M, THIS IS NOT THE FIC FOR YOU!!!!, TRIGGER WARNINGS FOR MENTAL HEALTH ISSUES!, character study of Mal, if you have panic attacks!!! or are sensitive to portrayals of panic attacks!!!, post-sequel, sequel-compliant, specific triggers discussed in the author's note inside
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-04
Updated: 2018-01-05
Packaged: 2019-02-28 01:57:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 10,685
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13261197
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shrill_fangirl_screaming/pseuds/shrill_fangirl_screaming
Summary: After Ben's coronation, Mal expected to fit in, in Auradon.After Cotillion, Mal deals with the fact that her expectations weren't quite met.(An examination of Mal's mental health, in two parts.)





	1. before

**Author's Note:**

> In re my trigger warning: If you are sensitive to characters having anxiety attacks, suicidal ideation, or a low valuation of their self-worth, proceed with caution. If you want more specific information about possible triggers in this story, hit me up at i-am-having-an-emotion.tumblr.com, my inbox is always open and I would be happy to tell you things. I interpret the beginning of the sequel as Mal having a complete panic attack/nervous breakdown, and I furthermore interpret her desire to go back to the Isle as a death wish. If any of this makes you uncomfortable, PLEASE go find another story to read, because we're all here to have a good time. 
> 
> I mean, I'm a sucker for happy endings so we all know our girl will be fine, but still. The getting there is rough.

_post-coronation_

 

Mal thought that if she chose Good, she’d get a happily ever after, guaranteed. Smooth sailing for the rest of her days.

The real world doesn’t work like that.

It started with, of all things, a slumber party.

 

“Mal!” Lonnie cried, collapsing into the chair next to Mal’s in the cafeteria. “Me and some of the other girls are having a sleepover tonight, you know, the whole nine yards. You and Evie want in?”

Mal’s reflex was a hard and immediate no. Her impulse was to bury herself in her heavily-fortified room and wait by the door with a weapon in hand while studying frantically for next week’s test on something she barely understood. But her first impulses were Bad, and Lonnie was Good, and Evie was beaming excitedly so Mal put on her best Auradon smile and said, “Sure, Lonnie, we’d love to.”

“Awesome!” Lonnie said. “My room, seven o’clock. There’ll be pizza and snacks, plus we’re planning on giving everyone a makeover, it’s going to be so much fun.”

“You should start with Mal,” Evie said, merriment in her eyes. “She could always use a fashion upgrade.”

Lonnie and Evie turned to Mal, whose reflex was one again to flee to a fortified location. She was a dangerous person and used to being surrounded by dangerous people, but Lonnie wasn’t dangerous. Well, not to the good guys, and Mal was a good guy now. They were both smiling, and they were Good, so this must be a good idea. “Sure,” Mal said. “I’d love it.”

A gnawing sense of mild dread made itself at home in Mal’s stomach as she made her way through her day. Classes that built on previous years of education Mal had never received, hordes of paparazzi waiting for her to misstep as she walked from building to building, packing up for an event Mal had absolutely no context for. What did a person need for a slumber party? Pajamas? A toothbrush? Booby traps?

The party was already rocking when Evie and Mal turned up- Lonnie and a bunch of her friends lounging on pillows eating slices of pizza. “You’re here!” Lonnie said. “Awesome. These are-“

Mal had no doubt Lonnie carefully enunciated each girl’s name as she pointed to them all in turn, because Evie seemed to have no trouble keeping them all straight, but to Mal it was a hopeless mash of syllables. She had no idea why she assumed the slumber party would be Jane and Audrey and Lonnie and then her and Evie- known quantities, people Mal already understood- but she was wrong. Strangers, at a strange event.

“So, Evie _conveniently_ volunteered Mal for the first round of makeover-ing,” Lonnie said, looking at Mal with mischief in her eyes- the look that promised pain on the Isle, but here meant perhaps mild embarrassment. “Anyone have any ideas where to start?”

One of the girls hummed, looking Mal over. “Maybe the hair?”

“Please,” Evie said, clasping her hands together, and everyone else laughed.

Mal chimed in with her own giggles. These girls were Good, so apparently good girls laughed at that kind of joke, and Mal was a good girl now.

The hair dye they had was better than the Isle’s stuff, but still took some time to set in. The other four girls set to work painting Mal’s long purple locks with white goop and wrapping them in tinfoil, then left her alone long enough to eat a slice of pizza while they talked about boys they thought were cute. A couple of them mentioned Ben, and Mal didn’t have to fake the big smile that crept across her face whenever his name came up.

Ben. Ben made sense. Ben, slipping his ring onto her finger and kissing her knuckles like she was something important and precious, locking eyes with her and telling her he hadn’t been faking anything. Ben was Good. She could be good for him. She had to.

Hair and nails and makeup and wardrobe. Mal was a good doll for them, laughing at the right places and saying, “Sure!” to everything and going with the flow. She could do this. Smile and nod and have her brain working overtime to catch possible missteps before they happen. This was do-able.

“Are you ready, Mal?” Lonnie asked, holding up a mirror with its face down.

Mal pulled out her bright smile. “Ready!”

Lonnie lifted the mirror.

Mal kept her artificial smile in place as she surveyed the mirror. The girl in it had long, straight hair so white-blonde it almost glowed. She had pale pink lips and winged eyeliner and the faintest hint of a blush. She looked like a princess out of fairytales, a perfect princess. “I love it!” Mal said. She allowed the conversation to bubble for maybe forty-five seconds, about as long as she could stand, before saying, “I’m gonna go use the restroom?”

“Second door over there,” Lonnie said, pointing.

“Thanks,” Mal said, flashing another bright smile.

She walked inside, shut the door, leaned her body against it, and collapsed into a fit of tears. Silent tears. Silent, because no one could ever know this was happening. This was not a good reaction, a Good reaction, so it _could not get out_. Mal counted slowly to sixty in her head as she fought back sound and sobbed, then choked it off with ruthless Isle efficiency.

One minute to fall apart.

She stood up and examined the reflection in the mirror, which almost brought it all back again. She didn’t recognize herself. Objectively, yes, she knew it was her, she wasn’t an idiot, but… _Mal_ had purple hair. It was sort of wavy and sort of curly and frizzed when the humidity on the Isle was bad in the summer. It was gone now.

Mal locked eyes with her reflection- her eyes were the same. She didn’t dare say it aloud, but she thought it, _bury it, bury the part of you that’s freaking out, she’s holding the rest of you back. This is what you look like now. This is who_ Mal _is now. Pull yourself together._

She pressed a cold washcloth around her eyes- good for the redness and swelling, a way to hide weakness she’d learned on the Isle. She flushed the empty toilet and ran the faucet, carefully fixing the makeup they’d so enthusiastically applied on her as a sign of friendship.

She turned off the faucet and looked at herself, one more time.

 _This is you now. Deal with it_.

Smile once more affixed to her face, Mal walked out to join the party.

 

The first test she got back had a 67 scrawled on it in big, red letters. _See me after class_ , said the note. “How’d you do?” asked Evie, whose 92 was clearly visible on her desk.

Mal shrugged. “Not as good as you, I guess.”

“Doug helped me study,” Evie said, with a somewhat dreamy look in her eye. “Plus, it’s not so hard. A lot of this was review from the last unit.”

Mal spent the entirety of the last unit preparing contingency plans for getting Fairy Godmother’s wand. “Right,” Mal said with a big smile. “Of course.”

She made an excuse to Evie to double back after class, and stood nervously in front of the teacher, binder pressed against her chest because it would offer at least some protection in case of a physical attack, and she shouldn’t be thinking in those terms anymore because she was Good now. “So, I’m noticing you’re having a little trouble with the tests,” the teacher said.

Mal nodded. “Yes.”

“Are you having trouble adjusting, because I know-“

“No,” Mal said, then thought that maybe Good girls didn’t interrupt, so quickly apologized, “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to interrupt. I just- no trouble adjusting. I’m fine.”

The teacher nodded. “Just a bad day for this test?”

Mal thought about the hours she’d spent reading the nigh-on incomprehensible textbook, looking at Evie’s homework trying to understand how step A led to step B to step C, and feeling failure choke her quiet. “Yeah, just a bad day,” Mal said. Easy smile, routine by now. “I’ll do better next time, I promise.”

“Good!” the teacher said.

“I know I am,” Mal said, then fled.

How the hell was she going to do better on the next one? She couldn’t exactly spend _more_ time studying, because studying seemed nigh-on useless anyway plus she was always scheduled to be doing something, she was going to fail the next one and everyone was going to figure out she was a big fake, she wasn’t good at all she was Bad, she was Wicked and Evil and she was feeling kind of lightheaded, it must be because her breath was coming in short strangled bursts and there was a burning in the back of her throat and in her eyes and _what was happening to her_?

She made it to the closest bathroom and locked herself in a stall. Her whole body was trembling, her heart was racing, she was crying and having trouble breathing.

 _Get it together, Mal. Pull yourself together. Good girls don’t fall apart like this_.

 

The first time Mal caught herself daydreaming about the Isle, she locked herself in her bedroom until she could stop shaking. She looked at herself in the mirror- that odd, alternate-universe, her-but-not-her blonde in the pastels who wore her face- and forced herself to look. Really look, past the makeover that shouldn’t matter that much.

She’d put on weight since she came to Auradon, they all had. You couldn’t count Carlos’s ribs anymore if he took his shirt off, and Jay was able to retain muscle mass now, and Evie’s hair looked healthier. It was because they all got to eat three square meals a day here, and got access to actual health care from people who knew what in the hell they were talking about, and slept somewhere warm and dry. There weren’t any bruises or cuts on her arms or legs from street brawls. She was better cared-for here than she had ever been anywhere else in her life. Why on Earth would she _ever_ want to go back?

… she wouldn’t have to pretend there. She’d lose the weight and her period would get irregular again and she’d get covered in dirt and bruises, but she could be herself again, no more pretending to be Good and waiting for the other shoe to drop.

She _belonged_ there. She didn’t deserve all the benefits of Auradon, it was for good people, and Mal could only fit in with good people by lying through her teeth, so really, she deserved to go back. She belonged back on the Isle.

At night, sometimes, when everything pressed down on her so hard she could hardly breathe, she would imagine running back. Stealing the car, flying back to the Isle, walking right up to someone and waiting. Any of her old enemies would do, the rival gangs she used to fight with to control territory. Uma’d always had a special grudge against Mal (or a crush, because on the Isle hate and love were hard to tell apart, which is why Mal had never bothered trying). Mal could just walk up to her and snarl some insults and then she’d be underwater, held there until she went to sleep and never had to wake up again.

Good girls didn’t daydream about their old rivals killing them someday.

 

Part of it, Mal thought later, was that the Isle’s threats were predictable.

She was sitting at a table with a pack of Auradonian girls, the usual crowd. Audrey was on the other end- their détente was stable enough for that, at least- talking about something. Mal forgot what, later, but it was nice. She almost felt like she could let up with the act a little. It was nice.

“I remember you in sixth grade, don’t lie,” Lonnie said, elbowing Jane. “You had a _plan_. You all remember Jane’s plan?”

Everyone laughed, Jane blushed. Evie threw a friendly arm around her shoulders. “Plans are good! I bet it was an excellent plan.”

“We’d all taken, like, this aptitude test,” Lonnie explained, “And it said Jane would make a really good doctor, right, so she made this huge plan for the rest of her life, you know, based around what she was going to be when she grew up.”

“I just wanted to help people, you know?” Jane asked.

Evie beamed. “I bet you’d be a great doctor.”

Lonne looked at Evie with open curiosity. “What do you want to be when you grow up?”

“Fashion designer, _obviously_ ,” Evie said, gesturing at her clothes. “I mean, come on. Look at this. Look at this!”

The future. What they were going to be in the future. Doing this, what she was doing now, forever, into the future, forever, because things were never going to stop and she was in Auradon for the rest of her life for the rest of her life for the rest of her life

“Excuse me,” Mal said, standing up and collecting her things. “I just remembered, I have to go to, um, the thing, so-“

Her stomach was tied up in knots. A future. A whole future. Her future. On Auradon. She was going to have to grow up here, in Auradon, with all these expectations weighing down on her and there was not an out. There was never going to be an out. Mal was going to have to keep faking her way through being Good for the rest of her life, keep up the fake smiles and the blonde hair dye and the clothes she felt exposed and vulnerable in, for the _rest of her life_ or else someone would find out Mal wasn’t really good, she was Wicked and they’d send her back to the Isle, where she’d end up with Harry’s hook buried in her gut in the shark-infested waters outside Uma’s pier.

She should just go back now. Save herself the time and trouble. Steal the car, fly on back and into Uma’s turf, going down kicking and screaming like she always knew she would.

Mal found herself in another one of the school’s bathrooms, locked in a stall, forcing her breathing back under control. _We are not going back to the Isle_ , she told herself firmly. _We picked Good. We belong in Auradon now_.

Besides, she’d forgotten one key aspect of an Auradonian future- her phone buzzed with a text from Ben, a stupid meme captioned _thought of you!!!!! looking forward to seeing you again :D_

A choked sob escaped Mal as she clutched her phone like a lifeline. God, her goofy boyfriend was the best. If her future had him in it, she could deal with the rest of it.

Right?

 

_Mini-Maleficent’s Roots Show While Visiting Royalty_

“Okay, that’s a cheap joke,” Evie said, looking at the headline over Mal’s shoulder. “But they’re right. We do need to touch these up.”

Mal batted Evie’s hands away from her hair, where her bright purple was starting to peek out from the bleached white-blonde of the rest of it. “I’ll do that tonight,” Mal said.

“We’re doing that study group with Lonnie and her friends tonight,” Evie reminded her.

Right, and that was for history, where her grade was borderline failing. She absolutely had to go to that, and before that she was seeing Ben, for a whole goddamn fifteen minutes at a time, and if she cancelled on him she would fling herself into the sun because it was basically the only thing she’d been looking forward to for the past week. “Right,” Mal said, putting on her brightest smile. “Then tomorrow morning.”

Evie frowned. “You promised to help me find more fabric.”

“And I will!” Mal said. “I’ll touch up before that. Or after it. Sometime. I’ll make time.” Mal added a laugh, because people didn’t worry about you as much when you laughed, when you made a joke of your stress. They figured if you could laugh about it, it wasn’t that bad.

Evie flashed a bright smile. “Okay, sounds good. I love you, Mal.”

“Love you too, Evie,” Mal said, replying on autopilot as her brain whirred and Evie bounced out of the room.

Mal ran through her list of responsibilities in her head and she could literally feel her thoughts speeding up as her heart began to race and her breaths started to get shorter and shorter. She couldn’t do it. She genuinely, full stop, could not do it. There was not a way for her to get everything done, but if something slipped then people would _know_ she was Wicked and they would all look at her with those judgmental Auradonian eyes as they shipped her ass back to the Isle and Ginny Gothel would attack her to suck whatever magic she could from Mal’s bones.

Magic.

Magic.

Mal stopped cold as ice ran through her veins. The book. Where was the book, her mother’s book, no one had really asked for it and Mal had been meaning to donate it to the museum or whatever but she never had time.

She found it in short order and ran her fingers down the front cover, hesitating. She knew she shouldn’t. She knew it was bad.

“I’m wicked either way,” Mal said, and cracked it open.

So many useful spells! So many things she could have been doing with magic so much easier than working hard through them, but she knew… she remembered Evie’s mom making jokes about grey hair… “Blonde hair spell,” Mal breathed. Oddly specific, but all the magic in the book was oddly specific. It was magic.

She recited the lines and did the motions, and it felt _so good_ in this perverse way, feeling the magic move under her skin. She knew it was wrong and it made her more Bad, but it proved she was right, that she wasn’t imagining anything. She was genuinely evil and rotten and wicked and cruel, incapable of functioning in the good and proper Auradon world, and the buzzing insidious magic in her veins _proved it_. That, accompanied by the crashing wave of relief from crossing something off the list…

Mal hid the book between her mattress and the other, harder mattress underneath it. There was no way she wasn’t doing that again.

She caught a glimpse of herself once more as she walked out, and her stomach swooped like she was in free-fall. Her outside was perfect again, beautifully Auradonian. Not her at all. But as long as she looked the part and managed to fake it for as long as possible, she’d be okay. She’d have to be okay.

 

The minutes she and Ben managed to carve out each week to see each other were always the highlight of her day, on the days they managed to actually happen. “Hey, beautiful,” Ben said, leaning against the locker next to hers with a big, soft smile on his face. “I brought you something.”

“Really?” Mal asked.

His smile just grew as he nodded. “Yeah!” He reached into his pocket and pulled out a phone case, bright purple with her name on the back in green, looking like it was spray-painted on, almost. “I thought you might like it.”

Mal took it and snapped it onto her phone. “I do,” she said. “I really do. Thank you.” She liked what it _meant_ most of all- that Ben had noticed her phone didn’t have a case on it like everyone else’s did, and spent some of his scarce free time hunting down a case she would genuinely like, and presented it to her once he’d found it just to make her smile. She liked _him_ , that he was thoughtful and kind and generous.

And she was a hot mess that never had anything to offer in return. All she could do- she got on her tiptoes and kissed him on the cheek. “You’re too sweet,” she said.

“I’m glad you like it,” Ben said, because he was a giant puppy.

“Things have been so crazy lately,” Mal said, meaning always, “It’s even sweeter to, you know, actually see you. For a change.”

“Yeah,” Ben said, stepping even closer to her with a big, dopey smile on his face. “I miss spending time with you.”

Mal’s guts turned to jelly. God, he was just _so good_. Like, the one great, good thing in her life, because everything else was a mess.

 _She was going to drag him into her mess, inevitably_.

Well, that brought her good mood to an abrupt and painful end. Ben frowned a little. “Is something wrong, Mal?”

“I just remembered-“ make an excuse, make an excuse, make an excuse- “There’s a quiz tomorrow I totally forgot to study for, I really have to go review.”

“You’re gonna do great,” Ben said, then kissed her on the forehead. “You’re gonna crush it.”

Mal laughed, a little hysterically. “You know it,” she said, then fled.

 

Spells were the only way Mal could function- she woke up sometimes in the dead of night panicking that she’d lose the book and everyone would know what a giant fake she was. Spells to hide her Isle roots- blonde hair and speed-reading and whipping up presents for Ben because he kept giving her things, he _kept giving her things_ and they were always lovely and useful and utterly personalized and she was so indebted to him at this point that she had no idea what the hell she was going to do.

Everything was like that, honestly- she was working so hard and just falling further and further behind. She was getting good grades on assignments, but her understanding of the material kept falling further and further behind so she needed more and more magic to keep up, and using that much magic made her tired all the time, but she also had so many things to do so then she did the entirely counterproductive thing of using magic to give herself more energy, which really just passed the buck along from Past Mal to Future Mal of continually compounding exhaustion, and really, Mal didn’t know how much longer she could do this.

She wouldn’t have this problem on the Isle. There’d be no magic, no responsibilities, no anything, just the short sharp shock of a knife in her gut, and then nothing.

“I’m not sure that’s such a good idea,” Evie said, looking at Mal rifling through the spellbook.

Mal rolled her eyes with a practiced smile. “It’s just easier than the dye, Evie,” Mal said. “Come on, you remember how gross it smelled and how long it took. The magic’s just more convenient.”

Evie shrugged, squirming a little like a true Auradonian. “I guess, it’s just- Mal, no one else gets to use magic.”

“No one else is cursed with purple hair, either,” Mal said, finishing up the spell and tucking the book back under her mattress. “See? It’s gone. No big deal.”

Evie didn’t look entirely reassured. Mal wouldn’t have been either, in her shoes, but she put on her brightest smile and said, “Come on. Now that I’m blonde again, we can head out. Let’s go.”

“All right,” Evie said, still a little suspicious.

Great. Another thing for her to have to deal with.

 

It wasn’t that Evie wouldn’t understand, Mal thought once they were back in Auradon. It wasn’t that she wouldn’t try to help, or that she wouldn’t tell Mal she loved her or that Mal deserved to be here. It was that it wouldn’t help, and furthermore, that Mal had always, always taken care of Evie, not the other way around, and Mal had no idea how to go about switching roles. She had no idea how to share her burdens with others, only how to shoulder others’ burdens along with her own, but now she was hunchbacked and breaking under the onus of responsibility and had absolutely no idea what to do with it.

Besides. Evie belonged here. Evie was a princess, and she had never been rotten like Mal had- she’d always been gentler, softer. She shouldn’t have to deal with all of Mal’s nonsense.

Maybe… maybe she’d try. Once. She didn’t have much to lose, after all. Mal squared her shoulders and walked into their room.

It looked like a fabric bomb had gone off. “Oh! Mal!” Evie cried, throwing herself at Mal. “I’m so glad you’re here! I’ve been sewing nonstop for like two hours and honestly, I could probably use the company.”

“Sewing?” Mal asked.

“For Cotillion,” Evie said. When Mal didn’t react, she added, “You know, _Cotillion_? Biggest party since Ben’s coronation? Where have you been?”

“Busy busy,” Mal said, looking around the room. She didn’t bother masking her distress- she didn’t have the energy. “This is a lot.”

Evie beamed and twirled. “I know, right? I’m making dresses for, like, _everybody_ , but don’t worry! I’ve been working on yours too. Here, try it on.”

Against such enthusiasm, Mal really had no recourse. She slipped on the half-finished dress and stood in the only clear space in the room. Evie whirled around her, pinning things for various arcane purposes. “Don’t you just love it?” Evie asked.

Mal looked down at herself- blonde, straight hair over her shoulders, blue and yellow ballgown. Unrecognizable. _No_ , she could say. _No, I don’t know who I am anymore, in this sort of thing, and I need help_.

Evie was smiling. Evie was happy here, Evie had a _place_ here…

“I love it,” Mal said.

She had no idea what else to do, and she was going to die of it.

 

“Come with me when I visit Aladdin and Jasmine,” Ben said, leaning up against her locker. “Please. It’ll just be a day trip, on a weekend so we won’t even miss any school. They’d be happy to see you, I bet.”

Mal laughed. “Me, Ben? Really?”

“I miss you,” he said, lacing his fingers through hers- warm and steady, warm and steady, everything about Ben was warm and steady as Mal froze and shook out of control. “It’d be fun! And you can show them that the Isle kids aren’t all bad.”

“Ah, your ulterior motive is revealed,” Mal said, shutting her locker again. “PR.”

Ben squeezed her hand. “If that was my ulterior motive, I’d ask Jay. But Mal, I just don’t want to be half a kingdom away from you all day unless I really have to, and they said I was more than welcome to bring along a plus one.”

“How long ago was this scheduled?” Mal asked.

“They know my plus one will be you,” Ben replied in lieu of an answer, which screamed _this was scheduled back when he was dating Audrey_. “Please?”

Those big puppy-dog eyes and the idea of spending time with him, away from the chaos, what else could she say but, “Yes. Of course.”

Ben beamed, then leaned in to kiss the very tip of her nose. “You’re the best.”

Mal forced herself to laugh. “The best, that’s me.”

He smiled at her some more, and what could Mal do but smile back? This was easy, this made sense, this was _right_. This is why she was treading water as hard as she could- she had to make this last as long as possible before it crashed and burned and Ben wanted her dead.

 

She’d gotten good at playing the part. She knew which moments to laugh in, to smile for the cameras, to sugarcoat everything on the Isle until the saccharine sweetness of it all hurt her teeth, to lie and lie and lie until the conversation moved away from her. It was horrible, but Ben’s hand squeezing hers helped. Less than it used to. It was like everything was farther away from her than it used to be, as she got buried under pastels and dye.

“And you seem like such a sweet young lady,” Jasmine said, and Mal genuinely had no idea how they got to this point in the conversation, but she knew her job- smile, look down a little modestly, cling tighter to Ben’s hand. “I think… I think we should meet Jay. Just to see. Maybe Jafar’s son _can_ be rehabilitated.”

Ben exhales in relief. “Jay’s a great guy, and a good friend. It’s not his fault who his father is. We’re not our parents. Right, Mal?”

“Right,” Mal said, because that was her line.

“Do you think you could tell us a little more about him?” Aladdin asked Mal. “Right now, all we have in our minds is the monster who tried to ruin our lives.”

Mal blinked. The most important parts of Jay, and how she knows him, and who he is to her, are all in the box marked _off-limits_ in her mind: the time he stayed out all night with her on a rooftop until Uma’s gang had stopped circling like the vultures they were, how he walked Evie home every day because she wasn’t allied with anyone powerful and was thus a threat, the way he only stole things people could afford to lose even with his father breathing down his neck. All of that would convince them; none of it she could say. “He likes tourney,” Mal said, because it was true. “He and Carlos- Cruella’s son- helped the team win the last game of the season. Jay got named MVP.”

“He’s a really loyal guy,” Ben said, because he is a wonderful person and sees the best in Mal’s prickly, wonderful friends. “Coach wanted to bench Carlos because- well, because he’s not that good, but Jay insisted. He and Carlos are really tight, he’s a great friend.”

“I’m sure he is, especially with this good girl as company,” Jasmine says with a warm smile.

She means it to be nice. It is nice. It is objectively a nice thing to say, and a part of Mal can appreciate it, but the rest of her is screaming inside because Jasmine, Princess Jasmine, Jasmine who Jafar ranted and raved about the one time Mal accidentally was in his store alone and couldn’t find a safe escape route so she sat there as he described a vixen intent on destroying his life and tempting his honor and Mal clung to her hidden blades and hoped to hell she didn’t look anything like Princess Jasmine, who was sitting in front of her and calling her good like Mal had never found comfort in the weight of her blades in her hands before.

Her breath caught tight in her throat- her skin felt two sizes too small, she wanted to claw it all off. “Thanks,” she said, sounding only mildly choked, smiling her biggest, fakest, Auradon smile.

“Now,” Jasmine said, turning to Ben. “How are your grades looking, young man?”

Grades.

Mal felt the familiar breathless panic rising in her throat and she knew she needed to go right now, immediately, so she turned to go, but because she was her it was at exactly the wrong moment and she rammed into someone serving the meal and spilled curry down her dress.

“Oh my gosh, Mal,” Ben said, jumping to his feet like a good boyfriend. “You okay?”

Fake, fake, fake. Mal smiled. “It’s fine, it was totally my fault,” she said. “Let me go clean this up, okay?”

“Of course- honey, if you need something else to wear, just ask, all right?” Jasmine said.

Mal nodded. “Will do, your Majesty,” she said, then turned and left.

It was almost a fair exchange- a quick, easy, and unquestioned escape route in exchange for the ruination of Evie’s hard work. She found the nearest washroom, shut the door, and leaned her full body weight against it as she showed off her ability to sob without making a sound.

She gave herself one minute to break down in dead silence.

Then she dealt with the mess of her dress and the mess of her face and went back out, Auradonian good again, a smile on her lips.


	2. after

_post-Cotillion_

She ended up passing out in Ben’s office after Cotillion. She felt like she was in free-fall, a little, without her magic to support her and exposed to everyone as what she was. Isle girl. Wicked. Ben was still a wonderful steadying force, quick with a goofy smile and a joke, ready to do any number of stupid things if it meant keeping Mal safe and happy.

They’d gone back to his office because he wanted to talk more about Uma- he didn’t understand her, and Mal sort of did, and they talked until their tongues were heavy in their mouths and they both ended up using his desk as a pillow to sleep sitting up.

Mal woke up at about four in the morning, two hours of sleep under her belt, heart absolutely racing.

She’d fallen asleep in Ben’s office.

She and Ben were spending the night together. Not in _that way_ , of course but Good girls didn’t do anything even remotely close to that, didn’t even make it possible for that implication to get around, because it would get around, she and Ben were both here and it was nighttime and people were going to make assumptions and she was going to be branded Wicked and sent back to the Isle and _Harry Hook was going to gut her and use her for chum_

“Mal?”

Ben was crouched in front of her. Mal took stock of her situation- she was sitting in a corner, knees pulled up in front of her chest, hyperventilating.

“Mal, it’s Ben, do you know where you are?” he asked, voice very gentle.

Mal looked at him and she was pretty sure her eyes were wild, glowing green. “Don’t make me go back,” she said, “Please, don’t let them make me go back.”

“I’m the king,” Ben said, carefully sitting down in front of her. “Nobody gets to do anything without my permission. You don’t ever have to go back.”

God, it was like eating after a long fast, drinking after a week in the desert, the relief that flooded over Mal. _She did not have to go back_. She didn’t trust it. “You promise?” she said. “Even if I’m bad?”

Ben’s eyes went wide. “Mal… do you think that if you do something terrible, we’ll send you back to the Isle as punishment?”

She couldn’t talk, just nodded.

He locked eyes with her, resting a hand on her forearm. “You never have to go back there,” he said. “If you want to, fine, but I’m never going to _make you_ go back.”

Something in Mal’s chest crumpled and she dissolved into tears- part relief, part still processing the Isle and everything that had happened on it. She reached out towards Ben with both hands, and sweet, soft boy that he was, he immediately cottoned on to what she wanted and tugged her into a hug. “I want to stay here,” Mal said.

“You can stay as long as you want,” Ben promised.

She cried herself out against his overly-starchy dress shirt. Even after the sobs subsided, she stayed huddled in the safety of his arms. Things were nice with Ben. Things were good. He was always so steady and confident, and at least at this point, he knew exactly what she needed- he stayed quiet.

His patience, however, was imperfect. “You wanna talk about what just happened?” he asked after maybe five minutes of quiet.

“No,” Mal replied.

“I- I get that,” Ben said. “But, um. I kinda feel like you should.”

Mal took a deep, shuddering breath. “What do you want to know?”

“You had me promise not to send you back to the Isle,” Ben said. “Why, um. Why did you make me promise that?”

Mal tried to pull herself a little closer to his chest. “I just- I don’t want to go back.”

“Okay,” Ben said. “Then why did you run back there, you know. The other day?”

The Isle had taught her, do not show weakness. There is no mercy, no pity, just another cruel and uncaring person to leverage your weakness against you. They will sink in their claws on every vulnerability they can find and tear you to shreds. Ben would… Ben wouldn’t do that. Couldn’t.

But it was still messy and pathetic and sad and Mal wasn’t any of those things, so she sugarcoated it, a little. Self-flagellation instead of a death wish. “It’s where wicked people live,” Mal said.

“Yeah,” Ben replied. Uncomprehending.

“I’m wicked, Ben,” Mal said, finally looking up at him. “I deserve to go there.”

Ben blinked. “You’re not wicked.”

“Yes, I am,” she retorted, because she knew exactly how he was going to respond and thus had her own arguments planned out. “I don’t like being around people, I don’t know half the things we’re supposed to know for school, I’ve tricked you into-“

“No, no, that’s not what I mean,” Ben says. “I mean… _people_ aren’t bad or good. People are just people. Like Uma, you know, she did a lot of things that hurt a lot of people, but she was trying to help some other people, so it’s not really fair to say she’s good or she’s bad. She’s just a person.”

Mal stopped, completely arrested by this idea. “But…” she frowned and couldn’t quite muster a counterargument. The _good_ and _evil_ dichotomy was so ingrained in her head, in her worldview, that the idea of someone not being good or evil just perplexed her. “Uma tried to break everyone out of the Isle. That’s bad. She’s wicked.”

“You tried to do that too,” Ben said.

“Exactly! I’m wicked too.”

“No,” Ben said, laughing a little. “Here, um. Audrey. Is Audrey good or bad?”

Mal made a face. “Good.”

“She made Chad drive three hours to help her fix a flat tire. She knew he liked her and she used that to make him do what she wanted. She dated me for months because she liked the idea of dating the prince, and how it made other people treat her. That’s manipulative, right? That’s bad. Audrey’s bad. Looks like I gotta send her to the Isle.”

“No,” Mal said. “But Audrey’s… you know, Audrey.”

Ben shrugged. “Actually, Chad’s pretty bad too. He manipulated Evie when she first showed up, and the second he felt like it would be to his benefit he turned on you all. He called her a golddigger and a cheat in front of everyone, and he keeps breaking into Carlos’s room. I think I’m going to send him back to the Isle too, if I’m deporting everyone bad.”

“But-“ Mal cut herself off, because she was going to say _but Chad belongs here_. “No. Chad is a dick.”

“That he is,” Ben replied. “Our parents were wrong when they made the Isle, Mal, they made a mistake. People aren’t good or bad, they’re just people. Chad’s insensitive and Audrey’s manipulative and you can be asocial and I can be really oblivious. We shouldn’t be exiled because of it.”

Mal thought on that. Ben was making sense, but she still wasn’t quite convinced.

Ben nodded. “So, um. You thought you were going to have to go back to the Isle and, uh. Panicked?”

“I mean, yeah, a little,” Mal said.

“Has that, um, happened before?”

Mal shrugged and nodded.

Ben shifted a little, obviously uncomfortable with the conversation. “Do you want to, um, talk to someone about that? Fairy Godmother or something? I mean, the adjustment here alone would send anyone to counseling, but-“

“What are you talking about?” Mal asked. “We’re talking about it right now?”

“I mean, like, someone who knows what they’re doing,” Ben said. “Someone, like, a counselor or something.”

Mal scowled. “What’s that?”

Understanding lit on Ben’s face. “When someone is extra sad, or stressed, or angry, you know, in Auradon, they can talk to a counselor, someone who’s trained in helping people figure out how they’re feeling and, like, deal with it… better. So if you’re, you know, panicking sometimes, they can help you… not do that so much.”

Mal considered this.

“Like a doctor,” Ben said. “But for your brain.”

“That might be a good idea. I’ll think about it,” Mal said, surprising herself because she genuinely meant it.

“Okay good,” Ben said. “Because you deserve to be happy here, Mal, and if you’re not, we- the rest of us- need to fix what’s wrong.”

And for the second time that night, Mal dissolved into tears against Ben’s chest.

 

A quiet night in with Evie, just hanging out- exactly what Mal wanted at the moment. No big gaggle of people to judge her and make her uncomfortable, just the company of another VK who knew what she was going through, and knew her well enough to take perfect care of her.

Well, not exactly _perfect_.

“Please just let me cut off the split ends,” Evie said. “Makeovers are so much fun! Please, Mal?”

Mal shook her head. “Come on, Dizzie did this, you don’t want to ruin her hard work, do you?”

“She did the straight version,” Evie said. “Being a dragon undid all her hard work, Mal, you came back with split ends and all. Here. I’ll give you a trim, and-“

“No,” Mal said, too fast, too loud.

Evie dropped her hair to hold one of her hands. “What’s wrong?”

“This is my hair,” Mal said. “This is what it looks like. This is what it’s supposed to look like. I like it like this.”

Evie studied Mal’s face. “Is this- before, you know, when it was blonde, was that one of the reasons why-“

“Yes.”

A short pause. “Okay,” Evie said. “Then let me get some really good conditioner- no magic, just great advice from Audrey. If we keep your hair hydrated, it probably won’t get so frizzy all the time.” A little more gently, she added, “Not a makeover, just… polishing up what’s already there. What’s already _you_.”

Mal thought about it. A little less frizziness might be nice, and it would also be nice to spend more time with Evie. Bonding. A lower-key, lower-stress, lower-pressure version of that first sleepover with the makeover that gave her her first panic attack.

(Panic attack. Panic attack. Mal loved Ben even more for arming her with words, a label for what was going on when her heart raced and breath came short and fast and stomach tied itself in knots. She had a word for it- it wasn’t scary anymore. Well. It wasn’t _as_ scary.)

“That’d be nice,” Mal said, with a real smile for Evie.

Evie beamed back. “Plus, it smells so good. I mean, come on! It even smells pretty.”

Mal ran her hands through her hair- sometimes-frizzy, split-end-filled, dark purple hair- and smiled. This, she could do. This, she could handle.

 

“Okay, what are we going to do?” Ben asked, hands on Mal’s shoulders.

“I’m going to go over there.”

“Yes you are.”

“I’m going to say hi to Jane.”

“You will do that.”

“I’m going to ask her if we can talk.”

“It’s gonna be great.” Ben kissed her on the forehead. “I’m proud of you.”

Mal blushed and tried to hide it by rolling her eyes. “I haven’t done anything yet, Ben,” she said.

Ben shrugged. “Yeah, but you’re taking steps to do things. You’re moving in the right direction, and I’m proud of you for working on making progress.”

Mal rolled her eyes again. “Sap.”

“You got this,” Ben said, giving her one more kiss on the forehead. “Go do it.”

Mal nodded, squared her shoulders, and walked over to where Jane was sitting. Ben and Mal had talked it over- Mal had been hanging around Lonnie and her crew because it felt like what everyone expected from her, but she didn’t really like it. Lonnie and her friends were nice, and Mal liked all of them individually, but they tended to move around in a crowd and it was really stressful for Mal, being around all of them at once. Jane, on the other hand, tended to be more of a loner, and was also usually nice to Mal and the other VKs. If Mal actually wanted to be happy, Ben and Mal had figured, Mal should hang out with more people she actually liked hanging out with. Like Jane.

“Hi, Jane,” Mal said, sitting down across from her.

Jane looked up with a bright if somewhat nervous smile. “Hi, Mal. Is there something you needed?”

“I just wanted to talk,” Mal said. “You know, eat lunch. Like people do.”

“You normally do that with Lonnie’s crew,” Jane said.

Mal nodded. “Lately that’s been kind of… a lot. So I figured I’d sit with you. Is that… is that okay?”

“Yeah, of course, that’s great,” Jane said. “You can sit here whenever. You know that, right, Mal?”

“I do now,” Mal said, offering a fleeting but genuine smile at Jane. “Thanks.”

 

Fairy Godmother caught Mal after class one day and got a faceful of purple hair for her efforts. “Mal! Mal. Mal, I need to talk to you.”

Irrational panic twisted painfully in Mal’s gut- Fairy Godmother _knew_ , she was going to send Mal back, she was going to send Mal to the Isle and

_Ben wouldn’t let her_. It wasn’t much, but it was something to put between Mal and her fear. She hated being the kind of person who needed her boyfriend to fight her battles, but for whatever reason, she really wasn’t up to fighting her own right now. “What’s up?” she asked Fairy Godmother in what she sincerely hoped was a normal-sounding voice.

Fairy Godmother tugged Mal out of earshot of the others, which made Mal’s anxiety skyrocket again until she said, “Ben mentioned you wanted to talk to someone.”

With great difficulty, Mal shifted her brain from fight/flight to conversation mode, made all the harder because she didn’t actually want to have this conversation. “Yes,” she said, because it was true.

“I’m guessing you won’t want to talk to me,” Fairy Godmother said. “Do you have anyone in mind?”

Mal chewed on the inside of her lip. “I don’t know,” she said. “Everyone who knows where I’m coming from is evil, and everyone who isn’t evil doesn’t know where I’m coming from. I don’t know if anyone can help, but Ben said I should ask.”

“Okay. I can start looking for you to see who might be the best fit,” Fairy Godmother replied. Then, even quieter, one hand reaching out towards Mal’s shoulders, “Are you safe?”

Mal frowned. “This is Auradon.”

“I mean- Mal, are you a danger to yourself or to anyone else, right now?”

The implication turned Mal’s guts to lead. “Oh. Oh. Um-“ she remembered the tight sinking feeling, how her breath would catch in her throat when she thought about the Isle, remembered how hot her hatred and misery had felt as she flew across the water back to the Isle and to Uma’s loving and lethal embrace. She compared that to now. “No, no, um- I just. Should probably talk to someone.”

“We can do that,” Fairy Godmother said. “I promise you. We will find someone who understands and isn’t evil, Mal, I promise.”

Good people don’t break their promises.

 

It took Mal a second to recognize a middle-aged Mulan, and in the end it was the military uniform that gave her away. “You got the fuzzy end of the lollipop when Fairy Godmother asked around, huh?” Mal asked, slinging her backpack to her feet as she sprawled into the chair.

Mulan shook her head. “I volunteered.”

“Morbid curiosity?”

“Empathy,” Mulan corrected. “I understand what you’ve been through.”

Mal scowled. “I thought Auradonians didn’t lie.”

“I haven’t been on the Isle of the Lost, you’re right. But, I did spend years of my life in constant physical danger, fighting enemies surrounded by comrades. When I left, I wasn’t sure how to start a life somewhere safe. It was hard, and sometimes I missed the war, and I hated myself for missing it because war is terrible. Does that sound familiar to you?” Mulan asked.

“The Isle wasn’t a war,” Mal said. “I lived there, it was my _home_.”

Mulan nodded. “War isn’t constant fighting,” she said. “We pitched tents, cooked food. Played silly games between battles. There was a lot of marching- we’d sing as we marched, sometimes, to pass the time. I grew very close to the other men in my regiment.”

Mal admitted, internally, grudgingly, that there may have been some similarities. The bits of the Isle she missed weren’t the gang wars with the other VKs testing their mettle against Maleficent’s girl- it was running wild and free with her crew, parkouring across buildings and speaking in a language of code and inside jokes. That, _maybe_ , Mulan could sort of understand.

Mulan smiled like she could see what was going on inside Mal’s mind. “Why did you want to talk to someone?” Mulan asked.

This was the point. This was exactly what Ben had suggested, that Mal tell her, but her instincts were screaming _do not show weakness_ and all she really knew about Mulan was that she raised a cool daughter who she would make cookies for sometimes and while that was nice and all, it didn’t mean that she could be _trusted_.

“Too soon?” Mulan asked, making a face. “Tell you what we’ll do instead. Let’s just get to know each other a little better first, so you can tell Fairy Godmother if you think this will work or not. Does that sound good?”

Mal didn’t trust her voice- she just nodded.

“I’m Mulan. Like I told you, I fought in a war back when I was much younger. My husband’s name is Shang, he fought in the war too. We have a daughter named Lonnie, who I think you know from school. I’m in charge of Auradon’s army, which mostly just runs around helping build chicken coops thanks to the peace we have. What about you?”

Mal cleared her throat. “I’m Mal. My mom is Maleficent.” If Mulan could casually bring up war, without details… “I grew up on the Isle of the Lost and transferred here a little more than six months ago with my three best friends, Evie, Jay, and Carlos. Um… I turned my mom into a lizard that lives in a terrarium in my room.” Pause. “I like purple.”

“I can tell,” Mulan said with a smile. “What are your friends like?”

“Evie’s wicked smart. She likes to look nice- she can be super vain sometimes- but underneath it she is _so smart_ , and she’s a really loyal friend. Jay and Carlos clown around a lot, but they also have my back, like, forever. Carlos is actually really good with computers, and then Jay’s- well, you probably know from Lonnie. He’s really athletic.”

Mal felt herself relaxing by degrees. Her friends were a safe topic. She could talk about them for days. “Did you know them back on the Isle, or did you meet when the four of you came here?” Mulan asked.

“I knew them on the Isle,” Mal said. There is a whole yawning history there, how the four of them banded together and forged actual _friendships_ in the eat-or-be-eaten world of the Isle but she doesn’t know how to talk about that. “We were friends.”

“That’s good,” Mulan said. “It’s probably easier to make the transition to Auradon with them, rather than if you were on your own. How have they been adjusting?”

Mal shrugs. “Evie likes it here- she likes the clothes, how pretty everything is, Doug. Carlos likes Dude, and, um. Jay really likes the sports, being part of a team. I think if he could, he’d be on every sports team there is to have here.”

Mulan frowned just a little. “Let me know if I need to back off, but you stopped yourself from talking more about Carlos. Is he okay here?”

“Yes, he’s great here,” Mal replied immediately. Mulan still looked confused, and Mal thought back to the Isle and Carlos’s role in it specifically, how many sleepless nights she and Jay spent trying to devise ways to keep this soft son of a second-string villain from being the class’s punching bag, and failing, and seeing him step too-carefully and tremble when his mother’s name was mentioned. She wanted to put into words the difference being in Auradon made, how he’d gained weight and grown a little and didn’t get bruises or stammer in fear anymore, but the differences between the Isle and Auradon pressed hard on her chest and she said, “He’s better here, and that’s all I’m going to say.”

“Okay. I can tell you really love your friends- if you say he’s okay, he’s okay. I just wanted to make sure we didn’t need to find someone for him to talk to too,” Mulan said with another smile. “What are you liking about Auradon?”

“Ben,” Mal said immediately, because even when everything else fell apart Ben was her constant. “Ben’s great,” she said, stalling, because she couldn’t think of anything real. “Strawberries. And, you know, a general lack of gang violence.” Laugh.

Mulan smiled. “I can imagine. Has Ben been helping you a lot?”

“As much as he can,” Mal said, and then realized that might sound like she had a problem with how much Ben was helping her, so she quickly elaborated, “I mean, he is running an entire country plus still going through school, because you idiots decided a sixteen-year-old boy could be king, and also it’s not his job to make sure I can be a functional person in Auradon, he can’t and shouldn’t be like the only person dealing with all my nonsense, so like, he helps as much as he can, and that’s good, I like that, I’m happy with that. I love that, I love _Ben_.”

Mulan didn’t seem at all disturbed by the word-vomit and also didn’t mention it at all- point to Mulan. “He’s a really sweet kid, always has been,” Mulan says. “I lobbied for the coronation age to be older, but then Belle and Adam reminded me that I fought a war when I was sixteen, so I didn’t really have a leg to stand on.”

“You were sixteen?” Mal asked, before she could stop herself.

Mulan nodded. “I tried to tell them that was different, there was a war going on and the world had changed since then, but they argued me down. Ben still has advisors and his parents to help guide him. I think Belle and Adam were just tired of ruling by that point, if you ask me.”

“It’s weird to hear their real names,” Mal said. “Gil always- they were Beauty and the Beast.”

“Gil?”

“Gaston’s son. Brainless. He was, um. Uma’s.”

Mulan frowned. “Uma’s?”

Mal swallowed. “In Uma’s… crowd. Her circle, or whatever. It wasn’t really a gang, gang, nobody had a _gang_ , but… he and Harry were her muscle.”

“Did you have muscle?”

“Jay, but…” Mal searched for words. “That was different.”

Mulan didn’t ask _different how?_ Just waited.

Mal looked around the room, anywhere but at Mulan. “Uma… Uma was in charge. She was on top. Harry was obsessed with her, and between her being insane and him having a hook, everyone else fell into line, you know, behind her. For me it was… I didn’t need anyone, because of my mom. Jay and I fell in together because we both wanted to protect someone who’d made themselves a target, and there’s strength in numbers.”

“Evie and Carlos,” Mulan said.

Mal nodded.

“That was very brave of you,” Mulan said.

“Not really,” Mal said. “They were defenseless, really. We had to take care of them, or they’d get murdered.”

Mulan nodded. “That’s bravery, Mal. You were in a dangerous situation and you still chose to defend some people around you who seemed like they couldn’t defend themselves. When my husband and I did that in the war, we got medals.”

“Yeah, but…” Mulan knew what the hell she was talking about, with bravery. Fa Mulan was brave as hell. Mal had seen Shan Yu when someone crossed him- facing him down, _defeating_ him, that took bravery. And honestly, Mulan was right. It was brave. There were risks, to associating with Carlos and Evie, and Mal and Jay bore them anyway to keep them safe. Mal was brave, but brave was Good, and Mal had been brave even back on the Isle. “I guess I never thought about it that way.”

 

“Hey,” Jay said, setting his tray down across from Mal and swinging his legs over the bench. “What’s up?”

“Not much, what’s up with you?” Mal replied.

Jay frowned a little and shook his head. “No, I mean, like, _what’s up_. How are _things_. You know?”

Mal looked him over cautiously. Jay had never been very touchy-feely- the two of them left that sort of thing to Evie and Carlos- but she also remembered how he’d looked at her with serious eyes and promised that if she couldn’t stay in Auradon another day, he’d drive her back to the Isle himself. “Not as bad as they were,” Mal said.

“But not back to normal yet?” Jay asked.

“Not sure what normal is, you know?” Mal took a bite of her sandwich to procrastinate responding. “I still feel kinda-“ lost, confused, scared, alone, like a freak, like a fake- “ick, but you know. People help.”

Jay nodded. “Anything I can do?”

Mal thought about it, really thought about it. “This is nice,” she said, waving a hand to generally indicate the conversation. “Other than that, just keep doing you, you know? Something close to normal.”

“Cool,” Jay said. “Good feelings talk?”

Mal laughed. “Yes. Good feelings talk.”

“Good,” Jay said, then shoved like half his sandwich into his mouth. “Don’t tell Evie I did this, though, ‘cause she’ll freaking murder me,” he said through a mouthful of food. “She said I’d say something dumb. But we did a good feelings talk anyway, so Evie can suck it.”

“I’ll keep it on the down-low,” Mal promised.

Jay nodded one more time, and then turned the conversation on a dime. “You coming to the fencing match tomorrow?” he asked. “Lonnie’s been kicking our asses, I think we have a real shot at totally crushing it. Carlos is also getting a lot faster, we’re all super proud of him.”

“Of course I’m coming,” Mal said. “Me and Evie gotta come out to support you guys, what do you take us for? I think she’s making banners.”

“Go villain kids, beat the other guys with swords?” Jay asked.

Mal rolled her eyes. “More along the lines of, go Jay and Carlos.”

“My way’s more fun,” Jay said, and just like that, they were back to bantering about totally normal things like it was any other day and Mal hadn’t had a complete nervous breakdown only a few weeks before. It was nice.

 

“I want to ask you something,” Mulan said.

“That’s the point of this, isn’t it?” Mal asked.

Mulan smiled. “You talk a lot about good and bad here, and at first I thought that was a good sign- you know, that you were thinking in terms of right and wrong. Do you think everything falls into _good_ and _bad_ , with nothing in-between?”

Mal picked at the side of one of her nails, even though Evie would probably scream when she saw it. “Ben said I shouldn’t,” she said. “You know. Right after Cotillion. He said that people weren’t good or bad, just-“

“But what do _you_ believe?” Mulan asked. “Not what Ben thinks. What you think.”

“There are people who are just _bad_ ,” Mal said. “I know most of them. I’ve met most of them. One of them is my mom. I can’t just- there are people who are just bad, like that, and then here, there are some people that are just good, like Ben, who’ve never hurt anyone, so… but then he brought up Chad and I got confused.”

Mulan frowned. “Chad?”

“Chad is a dick,” Mal said.

She was looking at her hands so she couldn’t see Mulan’s face, but she definitely heard the strangled sound that was almost a snort. By the time Mal whipped her head up to see Mulan’s face, there was no trace of amusement, but Mal would have bet the bank that Mulan _laughed_.

“So, you know some people are bad and some are good, and then some people fall somewhere in-between. Does that sound about right?” Mulan asked.

Mal nodded. “Yeah.”

“See, I agree with you,” Mulan said. “I think I would place fewer people at the extremes than you, but I think that’s a relatively accurate depiction of the world. Where do you think you fit, along that spectrum?”

“I’m wicked,” Mal said.

Mulan frowned. “You stopped your mother and Uma both from breaking down the barrier between Auradon and the Isle. You told me you and Jay helped protect Evie and Carlos on the Isle. Are those wicked things to do?”

“No, but…” Mal hunted for a way to make Mulan understand. “I don’t belong here. I feel so out of place here, but this is where Good people belong, so if I don’t belong here I can’t be Good.”

Mulan nodded. “Uh-huh. Now, Mal, I know you think people are good and bad, but are places good and bad too?”

“Auradon is good, and the Isle is bad,” Mal replied. “Duh.”

“That, I don’t agree with,” Mulan said. “We made it so lots of bad people live on the Isle and lots of good people live in Auradon, but that doesn’t make Auradon inherently a good place, you know, morally or ethically. We did imprison an entire generation of people who did nothing wrong on an island with a bunch of bad people, just because of who their parents were. That wasn’t _good_ , but Auradon did it anyway. Places aren’t good or bad, Mal. People are.”

Mal frowned. Her gut said that Mulan was wrong, but everything she said made sense. Besides, if someone like Chad or Audrey could belong in Auradon, maybe it wasn’t 100% Good after all. “I’ll have to think about that.”

“I think it might be a good idea for you to try and challenge some things you’ve categorized as good and bad,” Mulan said. “Some of those ideas are helpful- you know, good people do volunteer work, bad people steal, etcetera. But I think some of your ideas about good and bad don’t make quite as much sense, so I really think you should spend some time asking _why_ you think certain things are good and bad. Does that make sense?”

“I, um,” Mal said, “I really don’t think I’m qualified to decide if something is good or bad.”

“Then ask someone you think is qualified,” Mulan said. “But I have to ask- if you don’t trust your judgment of good and bad about everything, then why should you trust it when it says _you’re_ bad?”

Damn. She had a point.  

 

One day, she and Ben were walking through a garden on their scheduled Date Afternoon, and he turned to her and asked, “Are you- I mean, are you okay, now?”

Mal thought back to her talks with Mulan, the changes the other VKs have made around her to make her more comfortable, the weight of Ben’s hand in hers, and weighed it against the voice in her head that still categorized things into Good and Bad and panicked at the thought of discovery. “I’m better,” Mal said. “I don’t know if there is, you know, an okay, but I’m better.”

Ben smiled and kissed her temple. “Good.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for coming with me on this emotional rollercoaster, friends! I'm floored by the quality of the feedback I've been getting, holy shit. If you want to cry more with me about Mal and the rest of the VKs being mentally ill, definitely hit me up at i-am-having-an-emotion.tumblr.com. 
> 
> (Also, if you've read my other, pre-sequel Descendants fic, I *know* I keep bringing in Mulan but look a girl has to bring in her favorite Disney princess, okay?)


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